Brands In Soccer

The True Value Of Brands In Soccer

Clubs have reached the new fans largely on autopilot. They haven’t had brand strategies — or brand managers. The clubs’ brands have grown solely because people saw the teams play or just saw pictures of stars like Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo. The clubs themselves did almost nothing. Yet the business has grown. Admittedly, soccer remains a titchy industry: Its huge brands still suck little money out of consumers. The total revenues of all European professional clubs for the 2007-08 season were €14.6 billion. That’s about the same as the revenues that Nike made by itself in 2009 — and Nike, unlike most clubs, turns a profit. Yet soccer is a less titchy business than ever before, and the scope to suck more money out of the new foreign fans is huge.

Nobody knows how many of these people there are. Here are some of United’s recent estimates of its global fanbase:

None of these estimates is necessarily wrong. Perhaps there are 333 million people who have feelings for the brand Manchester United. However, few of these "fans" probably have lifelong exclusive brand loyalty. The new fan — a 19-year-old in Shenzhen, China, say — might have in her wardrobe a Barcelona shirt, Manchester United socks and a Real Madrid cap.

Fans for life

The great question for the big clubs is how to tie these international fans to their brands. Winning prizes is essential, because not many people support losers. But winning isn’t enough. Look at the adjoining list, compiled by the market researchers Sport+Markt, of the 20 clubs that it says have the most European fans (a good proxy for the strength of the clubs’ brands). Real Madrid — without a European title since 2002 — are a proud second on the list. Lyon, rulers of France for most recent seasons and slightly more successful than Real in recent Champions Leagues, are 17th.

True, Chelsea, a middling club until Roman Abramovich began pumping in oil money in 2003, currently rank fourth on Sport+Markt’s list. However, newer brands like Chelsea are weaker than historic ones like United. Sport+Markt publishes its top 20 annually. Chelsea can gain or lose several million self-reported European "fans" from one year to the next, depending on whether it has a good season or not. And most Asian or North American fans are even more fickle. United’s fanbase is considerably more stable, says Stephanus Tekle, senior consultant at Sport+Markt.

In short, there’s more to a club brand than winning things today. History matters too. For historic clubs that aren’t successful now, like Liverpool or Ajax Amsterdam, history is probably the biggest chunk of the brand. But the point is that any club brand consists of many elements. If you disaggregated Manchester United’s brand, for instance, the different elements would look something like this:

• Tragedy to triumph: from the plane crash that killed half a team at Munich in 1958 to winning the European Cup 10 years later, all under the same manager, Matt Busby.• Attacking soccer•Frequent success• Good-looking stars (George Best, Eric Cantona, David Beckham)• The continuity essential to any soap opera: Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs, for instance, are always there.• The very popularity of the brand. Many fans like following a club with millions of fans. It’s like belonging to a very large family.

So what destroys even the most ardent fans' faith in their club? That's next...